B&W tips?

Any tips/videos I should watch for improving my B&W photos? I use my old copy of SilverFX to do conversions now and was wondering if there is a better way? I am sometimes happy with how SilverFX does with some tweaks to the settings. Not looking for overly complicated methods as those will be hard for me to do with my vision as it is. I shoot RAW and sRGB.

What software do you use besides SilverFX?

Can you maybe post a couple examples of images that you have shot that you want to improve upon? Shooting an image and converting to black and white may not give you results you like if you have not really thought about looking for contrast or, tone or form that lends itself to a good black and white image. Starting with an image that is suited for black and white (conversion) is an important part of the exercise!

kirk

Digital B&W has so many variations...

I use Photoshop. I have not done much with B&W in a while now.

HTTP://photo-mojo.net/gallery/2014/​IMG_0883.jpg


That one I think came out good (to me at least).

HTTP://photo-mojo.net/gallery/2011/​IMG_2831_edit2.jpg

That one the big cloud looks flat. I guess I could of done some contrast on it.

Am I being overly critical?

Personally my favourite tool for converting to Black and White is to chose the B&W option in ACR or my case Lr and use that. I do use the colour mixer to create my prefered look, which I save as my own presets. The ACR tools give you the most number of colour channels to tune, which is why I prefer it to the other options in Ps.

I have used SilverFX but I soon went back to just using the RAW converter. I ended up hating using the film presets, as to my mind they looked terrible most of the time. The problem that we have when doing the conversion from a digital colour image we are essentially combining two different stages of the B&W creation process into one. The taking of the image, with the film and of course colour filter choices. This is the bit that the presets seem to try to imitate. However there seems to be no consideration of the darkroom processes. OK while the image is digital we can't really control the "surface finish", but different papes, and certainly different contrast grades used when printing make a huge difference to the final look of an image.

So when I'm doing B&W conversions I'm usually looking to create images that visually match the final print that I would have made in the darkroom when I was first learning photography in the mid 70's. I haven't found that in anything that is precanned in software yet. At least the Lr/ACR options allow you to very easily create your own presets, to quickly give you images that match your own vision.

Alan

I just need to get out more and mess around. I want to switch more to B&W since my vision is going and some colors no longer look correct to me. Like a blue sky now looks white to me. I can still edit color photos, because they are easier to see on my LCD than when I am out taking the pic. It will just take trial and error. With SilverFX I would find a preset that I liked, then go in and tweak the settings for it or do different layers with different presets and change the opacity of the layers to blend them to something I liked. A lot of that now is not the easiest thing for me to do just because of my vision. I am trying to keep editing to a minimum now. Just mainly color correction and saturation, etc. I used to have actions I made a while back that I could use, but have since lost them all and no idea what all I did to make them now.

EdATX wrote in post #19259133
I use Photoshop. I have not done much with B&W in a while now.

HTTP://photo-mojo.net/gallery/2014/​IMG_0883.jpg


That one I think came out good (to me at least).

HTTP://photo-mojo.net/gallery/2011/​IMG_2831_edit2.jpg

That one the big cloud looks flat. I guess I could of done some contrast on it.

Am I being overly critical?

I use PS at one time which I still have. One technique I used was to convert to HDR using Photomatix Pro. Typically Painterly which made everything richer. I used a basic B&W plug-in called Power Retouche and then edited. It stopped working a while ago and the state couldn't do an update. not sure why. I go this plug-in in about 2007.

http://www.powerretouc​he.com/black-white_studio.htm

I now pretty much use LR only. I don't use PS very much but it should have these filters.

https://www.youtube.co​m/watch?v=trlXHfJRpWI

https://www.youtube.co​m/watch?v=fM64UsSsdj0

https://www.youtube.co​m/watch?v=QiEDE_GKcLA

https://www.youtube.co​m/watch?v=dVNBOGzO29o

For this one I mixed and matched using the above techniques.

EdATX wrote in post #19258179
Any tips/videos I should watch for improving my B&W photos? I use my old copy of SilverFX to do conversions now and was wondering if there is a better way? I am sometimes happy with how SilverFX does with some tweaks to the settings. Not looking for overly complicated methods as those will be hard for me to do with my vision as it is. I shoot RAW and sRGB.

I think if you are already using Silver Efex, improvement comes from selecting subjects that will look good in black and white. If you step through all the presets in Silver Efex, it's going to come up a wide selection of looks, most of the ways you would want to process a photo, and then you can do a little refining in either Silver Efex or back in Lightroom. Seems easier to work those sliders in Lightroom once you have the basic look down. I flip back and forth a little bit, trying things in Silver Efex, or just going straight to Lightroom to do the black and white conversion. Silver Efex does toss out some looks I wouldn't have come up with, more dramatic processing. Anyway, figure out what kind of scene is going to work well in black and white, that's the hard part.